Web.com Group Downgraded to Sell at Zacks (WWWW)

According to Zacks, “WEB.COM GROUP, INC. is a leading provider of online marketing for small businesses. Web.com offers a full range of online …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hogH via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNgbhE

GoMarketing Inc. Designs, Builds New Corporate E-Commerce Site for Universal Arquati

Universal Arquati, America’s premier picture frame moulding company selected GoMarketing Inc., a leading internet advertising and online marketing …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcssLu via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNg9pS

The Hotel and Resort Operator's Digital Marketing Budget Guide for 2016

More than half of all hotel rooms will be booked online by the end of 2015 (Google Research). Therefore, establishing a strategic digital marketing …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hogD via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1j27Kj2

Regional colleges receive accolades, and other company news

Cedar Crest also was recently placed on Affordable Colleges Online’s top … Kuhns brings more than 20 years of experience to the marketing and …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcssLx via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNgb1a

Waypedia.com Highlights the Mobile App Marketing Blunders That May Affect Online Business ...

Mobile app marketing has made the waves and is continuously bringing success to online businesses because it has proven to be a very dominant …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcsva0 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1j27HDZ

Founder of Stitch Fix Answers 4 Questions for Marketing Innovators

Inspired by the opportunity to create a truly personalized online shopping experience by blending the best of brick-and-mortar retail with an innovative …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hrsI via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1j27K2y

6 Tips to Help You Receive Good Online Reviews

A smart shopper is an informed shopper and many people use the internet to … Contact Us for more information about branding and online marketing.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hogz via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNgb0Z

Social Media Marketing Statistics Highlight the Importance of Frequency and Consistency

The increased online engagement between brands and consumers shows that this marketing practice is no longer something you can squeeze in …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcssuU via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNg99i

10 Ways to Turn Online Marketing Into In-Store Sales

The best way to increase your in-store sales is to boost your online … Businesses that are able to best align their marketing strategies to leverage …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9ho03 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNgaKF

Baidu Bets Big On O2O

According to iResearch, the Online-to-Offline or O2O service industry is … By segment, revenues from online marketing services grew 37.1% to RMB …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9ho0b via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1j27JM0

The 9 essential components of a powerful digital marketing strategy

There is no miracle answer or silver bullet when it comes to online marketing. It’s a complex mix of all the points listed below. Are you ready to get …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcssej via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNg8SP

Make Your Employees Social Marketing Advocates

dv1492004 Adopting a social marketing strategy has become one of the most significant ways to actually reach your target customers. But many …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcsrXZ via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNg8Cx

RealtyTrac Launches Enhanced Marketing List Prospecting Platform

… data on more than 120 million residential and commercial properties to create targeted marketing lists in a convenient, self-service online interface.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hnJK via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNgaKo

Constant Contact Receives Consensus Rating of "Hold" from Brokerages (NASDAQ:CTCT)

Constant Contact, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTCT) is a provider of online marketing tools for small organizations, including small businesses, associations and …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hqVT via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNg8Cn

Marketing Wrecks a Space Mission in Another Hilarious Adobe Ad

In this one, we witness the impact of marketing on a space shuttle launch to Mars. As we count down to lift off, the mission (and rousing music) keeps …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hrce via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNg8Ck

Marketing alcohol delivery as a safety thing, Klink enters Dallas with Uptown's In the Sack

Online beer and liquor apps already here include Minibar, Saucey, Drinkfly, Lash and Thirstie. Minibar and Lash are here and Drinkfly partners with …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hnJG via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNgau0

How can Bloggers Successfully Take on Affiliate Marketing?

… timely fashion, and injecting their own personalities into the fashion edits,” commented Stephanie Villegas-Ross, online marketing manager, REISS.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcsrXG via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1j27Jf6

Marketing Executive/ Marketing Officer (Digital / Online Marketing)

Caterbee HR Solutions Limited is hiring Marketing Executive/ Marketing Officer (Digital / Online Marketing). 1 years of working experience in marketing …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1L41H88 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNgadq

How Innovation Changes The Ps Of Marketing

I recently spoke at the Internet Marketing Association’s annual conference on the topic of innovations that give consumers more time (and how this …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1hcsrHq via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1j27IYz

Mergers & acquisitions changing the world of content marketing

To answer this need, many content marketing companies have risen to the … When you consider the fact that online marketers and business owners …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O9hqVP via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iNg7OY

Beyond The Web: Why App Deep Linking Is The Next Big Thing

Beyond The Web: Why App Deep Linking Is The Next Big Thing was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

If you have an app, app indexing should be more than on your radar – it should be a practice, according to the speakers of this lively SMX East session. Mariya Moeva, Emily Grossman, and Igal Stolpner all take the stage to offer convincing anecdotes and facts for why you should be implementing app indexing now. They also provide tips on how to do it.

Moderator: Barry Schwartz, News Editor, Search Engine Land, RustyBrick (@rustybrick)

Speakers:

• Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google
• Emily Grossman, Mobile Marketing Specialist, MobileMoxie (@goutaste)
• Igal Stolpner, Head of Growth & Marketing, Investing.com (@igalst)

Mariya: Get Your App Indexed with This One Weird Trick!

App indexing best practices. Practical, specific advice for people with apps.

Where are we with apps? The progress is like where websites were in 1999. There are no set standards with apps as we have today, like with HTML and CSS, and we’re learning as we go. Google currently supports deep app links for signed in and signed out users on Android. Soon (October, says Mariya) they will support iOS 9 universal links and then you’ll see app deep linking in Google Search for iPhones in Safari as well.

Google has indexed more than 50 billion app links and the number is growing every day.

25% of searches on Android return app deep links.

Visit http://ift.tt/1KT3AjA to see featured case studies. You can read these to ask yourself: does this makes sense to you? Have some accurate KPIs that you can measure so you can see if you’re getting what you want out of it.

Tips for implementation:

Use http scheme instead of a custom scheme.

1. Associate your site with your app. You can do this from either Search Console or Developer Console.
2. Publish your deep links. She recommends using the app indexing API to do this. Send a title and description of the page and Google maps on their end. It’s a simpler implementation and comes with a ranking boost.

Monitoring what’s going on:

Add your app to Search Console. You can see clicks and impression for your content as well as queries. There’s also going tell installs of your app and you can be part of their beta test.

Errors

Fetch as Google for Apps. See how your app looks to the Google crawler.

You will be able to test changes to your app without pushing it live to Google Play.

Fetch as Google for API info:

Google updated its infrastructure so that it can do deep linking for iOS. A year from now, she hopes for a shared standard that we can talk about that gets app content in front of users in the same way we have for websites.

Emily: App Store Model Versus Search Engine Model

App Store model: meta data provides a preview of the type of content in the app. Google wasn’t previously able to get inside of the app and understand what’s inside it. That’s a problem if your goal is to index all the world’s data.

Now rather than an app store model we’re looking at a search engine model and it’s powered by deep linking. A specific URL is assigned to an app screen.

HTTP scheme

Android API

If you do custom scheme URLs you have to do web markup. Here’s the deep link URL format:

Sync with Google Play Developer Console or Search Console.

iOS was added to the developer documentation as of last night. This is very different documentation than any documentation Google’s released.

Get your app ready:

Modify your application delegate.

Adopt an entitlement in Xcode that lists each domain associated with your app.

Get your server ready:

Create an apple-app-site-association file for each associated domain with the content your app supports and host it at the root level.

Association file must be hosted on an HTTPS domain.

CocoaPods is the dependency layer that allows for functionality between the app and search. iOS 9 gets rid of the need for this but CocoaPod syncing is still required:

Apple Search

Apple is invested in getting users into apps because Apple’s made $9 billion on the App Store. Apple Search works with a public and private index. Results in Apple Search pull from both.

With NSUserActivity, Google won’t put content in the public index just because you say it’s public. They’ll start it in the private index and test it until they feel confident adding it to the public index. Web Markup is the only option for directly getting it into public index.

App Search API Validation Tool – you’ll see how Apple sees your app and how it will show up in search results.

Igal: App Indexing Case Studies and Why You Should Invest in Deep Linking Too

Igal says he learned from Mariya just now that you can soon test an SDK before going live and that’s a very big thing.

Apps and app indexing aren’t for everyone. Apps do a better job for his industry (finance) because:

Apps vs. Mobile Site

They offer the same content and found more pages per session and more monthly visits per user on apps.

Since implementing in early 2014, drop of non-daily users from 15% to 8%.

Why aim for app indexing?

Competition isn’t there yet.

Increases CTR.

Brings new installs.

Improves rankings.

In Google search results an indexed app appears with its logo. This grabs attention and increases the CTR up 40%.

Google drives new installs directly from search results. This isn’t at the expense of traffic to the mobile site.

Challenges:

Coordinating the work between different teams.

Apps are released in versions – everything is slower!

Adjusting the App for Google Search

App’s back button

First click free experience

Slow loading

Some results: Android

Users coming to the app from Google search view 20% more screens in a session and spend longer in the app. If a user has the app installed they’re getting higher rankings.

Question for Mariya: Can you explain the ranking boost again?

If you have web content corresponding with an app page, you get a ranking boost.

When you let Google index content using the API, you let Google see what pages of your content users like the most and for those there’s an additionally ranking boost.

Is the ranking boost given regardless or just for high engagement?

There aren’t many apps using the API now and those that are all high quality, high engagement. As more apps join, they’ll tune and adjust.

Search Console shows you everything that happened before a click and the click. Analytics is everything after the click. Together you see the full picture.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1OHsolj via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1O46nf2

Creating a Search Culture in a Large Organization – Executives Share Their Experience at SMX

Creating a Search Culture in a Large Organization – Executives Share Their Experience at SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

“Empowering Your Organization with a Search Culture” is a unique SMX East session. Executives from Verizon, Comcast and Pernod-Ricard will share some of their insights, challenges and strategies when it comes to digital marketing for massive brands.

Courtney Goldstein, Eryck Dzotsi, Wendy Bolivar, Bill Hunt, Cory Haldeman

Absolute SEO for Absolut Vodka

Pernod-Ricard is a global organization with 300 brands in 80 countries with 101 sites. Brands include Absolut and Chivas Regal Whiskey. Two years ago, Bill Hunt (@BillHunt) started doing SEO for the company. Along with Pernod-Ricard’s Engagement Manager Wendy Bolivar (@wendybolivar), Hunt talks about Pernod-Ricard’s goals, as well as his challenges and tasks.

Pernod-Ricard’s Top Three Priorities

• Consumer Centricity
• Excellent Execution
• Speed and Scale

“We wanted to have one-on-one relationships with the consumers, from social media to advertising. We wanted to personalize interactions with consumers. We wanted to make sure that the entire organization is thinking of search,” explains Bolivar.

Bill’s Tasks to Achieve Goals

• Create a scalable framework for “findability” — not just in search, but in social media, too.
• Increase adoption by brands and markets.
• Increase SERP shelf space.
• Reduce paid media and agency costs.
• Maximize the “last three feet” by enabling partners through the optimization of product feeds.
• Develop “Spirit Interest Journeys” by finding how people search for different drinks.

While Wendy Made Sure

• Search is a key part of a marketing ecosystem and should never be a standalone activity.
• Search is a portfolio play and requires collaboration with wider teams.
• Search is about understanding consumer behaviors and interests.
• Search has to serve one or many specific business objectives to be effective for business.

Bill’s Challenges

• Markets have limited budgets.
• Global brand controls websites.
• Few understand digital and search.
• There’s a campaign marketing culture.
• Marketing is about the experience.
• Decentralized management and resources.

Verizon on Achieving SEO

Head of SEO and content strategy for Verizon Communications, Cory Haldeman (@coryhaldeman), takes the stage.

“At the top level, the C-suite needs to think of SEO as a vehicle. Help them understand how the search engines work at a high level. Explain crawling, indexation, ranking and relevance. It’s not dumbing it down, but streamlining,” he says.

Haldeman recommends explaining the context: everyone uses search, and their competitors are also there. Show them how the competition is beating them, and it will light a fire among executives to fight back.

And remember: share price is the bottom line. Show them how SEO will benefit the bottom line. Use Google Trends to show the C-suite when and how people think.

Achieve IT Buy-In

“Most of the time, IT hates me,” Haldeman admits. “But sometimes they love you.”

What the IT department does is critical to your success. You must form a relationship with them. Be clear. Don’t give fluffy requirements. Be very specific. Haldeman created an SEO bible for Verizon’s IT teams and constantly encourages them to use it. He also makes sure to thank them. He reports back to the IT teams how their work is helping the company achieve success. Give them the credit that they’re due.

Establishing a Digital Center of Excellence at Comcast

Comcast’s VP of digital marketing, Courtney Goldstein, and Eryck Dzotsi (@erycked), director of SEO at Merkle, are next up. They’re going to share the struggles they had bringing Comcast up-to-speed when it comes to SEO and digital marketing.

The old media approach at Comcast was all about television. Goldstein shares a quote from founder Ralph Roberts: “The fundamental fact is that people love television and if you can provide them with more television, they’ll love it even more.”

In today’s world, with 60 percent growth in the number of homes that have absolutely no television in them, the old model of focusing on television doesn’t work anymore.

Comcast used to have disparate teams, but with Dzotsi’s help, the entire organization began to think holistically. For the past year and a half, Comcast’s entire organization has thought in terms of SEO. Even lawyers were educated on title tags.

Business goals became aligned across teams, and that made the search agency’s job a lot easier since everyone was on the same page.

Search Culture Recommendations

1. Prove value to gain advocates from a brand. Provide data, analytics and metrics. Educate your clients.
2. Incorporate search in cross functional digital processes.
3. Be flexible and embrace change.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1JE82BQ via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JEWGxr

Winning at Mobile PPC Advertising – SMX Liveblog

Winning at Mobile PPC Advertising – SMX Liveblog was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

John Busby, Amy Bishop and Aaron Levy

This SMX East session titled “Winning At Mobile PPC (Beyond mCommerce)” promises to take us beyond the “why you have to be on mobile” rhetoric, since that’s now a given. Speakers Aaron Levy, Amy Bishop and John Busby will share from their experience (they’re all senior-level ad managers) to help advertisers take advantage of mobile user behavior to drive ecommerce.

Know Your Mobile Audience – Aaron Levy

Aaron Levy (@bigalittlea), manager of client strategy at Elite SEM, starts things off.

Printing Money on the Go: Alternate Metrics for Mobile Audiences

Is your mobile conversion rate low? Let’s talk about why mobile doesn’t convert like desktop. It’s not mobile’s fault. It’s our fault. Why? Because we’re not doing mobile persona research. And mobile users behave differently than desktop users. Before he gets to that research, however, he has some fast facts from his mobile research:

• Mobile volume thrives in boredom and commuter hours: when you’re on a train, a plane, a bus, etc.

• Mobile peaks on weekends – everyone’s at home and no one wants to go on a desktop.

• Mobile conversion rate is steady throughout the day (unlike a desktop).

• Mobile conversion increases throughout the week (desktop tanks).

• Mobile usage skews toward low income users.

• Mobile usage skews toward Hispanic users.

Audience-Driven Metrics and Goals: The Four Types of People Using Mobile

Don’t think about the device. Think about who’s using it. People shopping at Brooks Brothers aren’t the same people shopping at Walmart. They have different goals. Levy puts people into four buckets: Bored, Research, Need and Desperate.

1. Bored

These are professionals. People who have a commute. People who don’t want to talk to other people when they walk into a room. You’re doing nothing. This is someone on the go. Could switch to a computer if they want — they’re second screening. They’re really impulsive. They’re killing time. Make their decisions as easily as possible. Persuade them and they’ll buy. Don’t give them too much – they’ll bail if you show them an email form. They’re usually rich.

One solution to reach the Bored mobile audience: Implement a PayPal button. Average conversion rate for Amazon Prime? 79 percent. They have the PayPal button. Tempt the buyer and then get out of the way.

2. Research

These are often parents. They’re busy, and they have a few extra minutes. They’ll probably finish their task elsewhere. They’re filling time rather than wasting time. They’re multi-device searchers that are a pain to track. Pensive, protective and thoughtful. Don’t want to part with their money easily. They’re not going to buy from their phone. Your conversion rate here will be terrible. Give them what they want — they’re here for information. Understand their motivation. Are they shopping for new or a replacement? Get them to sniff around and know that they’ll come back later.

Solution for the Research mobile user base: Use cross-device attribution. See Google AdWords’ Total Conversions metric. You can’t find this data in a third-party bid tool. Use this ratio to pinpoint how much people are moving around, and it will help you determine what mobile is really worth:

3. Need

The people in this bucket are on mobile because they don’t necessarily have desktop computers.

They don’t necessarily have nice phones (they can be using flip phones!). Data, in fact, might be precious to them — don’t waste theirs. The person could also be on vacation and not have a laptop with them. In this case, then, you have a single device searcher. They don’t really want to buy it on their phone, but they will because they don’t have another option. Preach convenience in your copy. Usually this falls into the low income bracket.

Solution for Need mobile searchers: Offer conversion options. This audience group might not have a credit card. Invite them into the store, then, with a location-based coupon (cash and store-based conversions)! And make the coupon code as easy as possible.

4. Desperate

These are the people that forgot something. They need something right away, super quick. They’re usually on the richer side — whatever they find is the first thing they’re going to buy.

Solution for the Desperate mobile audience type: Make the conversion as easy as possible and, again, get out of the way. Don’t have a form — identify alternate KPIs. Don’t make them go elsewhere. Provide convenience-driven copy.

Keep Your Radius Small – Amy Bishop

Amy Bishop (@hoffman8), senior manager: audits, outbound, training at Clix Marketing, has a lot of info to share. She starts out by telling us that 60 percent of local searchers say location information on ads is important to them. Bishop says to reign in the radius, though.

“Take your locations and target the radius around them. This is important because people are looking for things around them. 72 percent of consumers who performed a local search visited a store within 5 miles. Searches containing ‘near me’ have grown exponentially. And 80 percent of ‘near me’ searches occur on a mobile device. 50 percent of local searches result in a same day store visit,” she says. “When you’re targeting people on mobile, you’re not just interrupting their session, but their day. So the radius you choose is important.”

If you determine opportunities to tighten or expand location targeting, do it.

Takeaways

• People who are searching for your brand — you can set a bigger radius because they’re searching for your stores. But narrow it for those not searching by brand.
• Consumers will go in a store if they’re close to a store, if they can get the product quickly and/or if they can get better pricing.
• 42 percent of people are conducting research via mobile in the store.
• Timing matters. Consider your target demographic’s interests. If you’re targeting someone at the gym, hit them with a coupon for athletic gear.
• Once at their destination, 56 percent of travelers rely on mobile devices to find and decide on activities.

How to Track Mobile Ads – John Busby

John Busby (@JohnMBusby) is senior vice president of marketing & consumer insights at Marchex Consumers. First, he tells the audience that people are using mobile phones in a dramatically different fashion than they use desktop computers. After a local mobile search, for example, the most common response to a mobile search is to make a phone call or store visit. So, fundamentally, the mobile phone is a bridge between the online and the offline world.

For the past 15 years, marketers have been focused on cookies and tracking. But the “marketing technology stack” isn’t designed for phone calls.

Google has two PPC ad formats that support phone calls: enhanced campaigns and call-only campaigns. You probably have these questions:

• Which ad or keyword generated the call?
• Did the phone call convert to a sale?
• How do I optimize my call?

To know which ad generated the call, use a tracking pixel or unique phone number (supplied by Google) placed in the ad.

In order to know which keyword generated a call, you need Dynamic Tracking.

To know whether the call converted to a sale, use conversational analytics. This monitors speech silence programmatically to determine the likelihood of a sale.

Other Advice for Mobile PPC Advertisers

• Some keywords are more likely to drive web conversions, while others are more likely to convert through calls.
• Test call-focused campaigns for keywords that drive call conversions.
• Generally speaking, we find that geo-targeted brand campaigns can be more cost-effective.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1iMo32S via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1O46k2W

SMX Liveblog: Getting Mobile Friendly to Survive the Next Mobilegeddon

SMX Liveblog: Getting Mobile Friendly to Survive the Next Mobilegeddon was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Mobile. Mobile. Mobile!

Moderator:Barry Schwartz, News Editor, Search Engine Land, RustyBrick (@rustybrick)

Speakers:

• Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google (@methode)
• Stoney deGeyter, CEO, Pole Position Marketing (@StoneyD)
• Marcus Tober, Founder/CTO, Searchmetrics Inc. (@marcustober)

Gary Illyes: Google’s Mobile Focus

When Gary was a kid he never did what parents and teachers told him to do. Roughly when Justin Beiber was knee-high to a snow blower, his parents got him a computer and thought that might give him something to spend time on in a good way. It didn’t work. But around 2000 he got a cell phone. This made him very cool. That worked!

In 2005 he got his first girlfriend a mobile phone. He expected she’d be excited about it. Her response: Is there Internet on it?

Gary appreciated the power of the Internet for getting him Super Mario cheat codes. But he also so there was more than 10 blue links. He’s flashing photos of cats playing keyboards on the screen.

People’s expectations of search have changed and continue to change – radically.

Autocomplete was a change, for example. Today Google focuses exclusively on mobile. 2015 is the year when mobile search exceeds desktop searches.

People aren’t just searching. They’re shopping, reading email, seeking advice, comparing products and reviews.

• Mobile friendly update: On April 21, 2015, Google made the mobile-friendly update. They look at “5 or so” properties of a page and if they appear right on a mobile screen.
• App indexing: Apps show up in search results and when users click on the result and have the app installed, they’ll bring the user to that result in the app. If they don’t have the app, there’s an install button in the result. This takes away friction.
• Google Now: It effectively pushes relevant info to you. Traffic alerts, photospots, see this presentation by Cindy Krum from Day 1 of SMX East (http://bit.ly/1KMtjgs).
• Now on Tap: At Google I/O, Google talked about it. If you’re chatting with a friend and want to organize dinner, you shouldn’t have to copy and paste text into a search box. Instead, a long tap on the chat text will give you more info and context.
• Voice search: This is the future where you talk to gadgets and they answer you. Search strings like this will work:

Stoney deGeyter: Configuring Your Mobile Friendly Site

Common mistakes:

• Blocking JavaScript, CSS and images. Search engines need this to see how your site renders on different screens
• Unplayable content. There are issues with mobiles playing Flash videos. Use video-embedding that’s playable on all devices. Optional: provide a transcript of the video available.
• Mobile-only 404s. Allow visitors on mobile devices to pass through to your mobile URLs without error.
• Redirecting to the wrong pages. Redirect each URL to the appropriate mobile counterpart – NOT the home page. Make sure redirects work on all devices.
• Use banners instead. Let people get to the content without forcing them to view an overlay.
• Irrelevant cross-links. For example, when you provide a link to view the mobile site from the desktop site or vice versa, make sure you go to the same page and not the home page.
• Slow loading pages.
• Non-responsive images. Use the HTML picture element to serve different size images to different devices based on their screen size. Cheat: use automated “adaptive images” tools and plugins.
• Small touch size. Design for fat fingers.
• Unreadable text. Use EM or REM units on your fonts, and then adjust the base font size for different screen resolutions using media queries.

Responsive website configurations:

Marcus Tober: The Data of Going Mobile-Friendly

Marcus’s presentations are slide-heavy and available here: http://ift.tt/1GhsLLw

Google is focusing on mobile, so forget about desktop. We use our phones everywhere. That’s why Google focuses on how users interact with content and how to serve it. On mobile we want things as fast as possible.

Concepts like keyword density and how many links on a page is irrelevant in the mobile world. It’s about how we use it, how we share it. Focusing on the content makes us much more successful.

Mobilegeddon was an update Google announced many weeks in advance. There’s always winners and losers of changes.

Losers:

• Boxofficemojo
• Didct.cc
• Reddit.com

In the case of Reddit they implemented a separate m.dot mobile site and recovered all their traffic and rankings.

Mobile Ranking Factors Study

Be aware of the correlation and causation paradigm. Don’t believe that high correlation is a high factor and vice versa. These factors compare mobile and desktop.

They measured the correlation of these factors.

• Presence of unordered lists
• Number of interactive elements
• Number of backlinks
• HTTPS
• Number of internal links
• File size
• Site speed
• Keyword in title
• Word count
• Keywords in body
• Proof terms
• Relevant terms
• Redirects

For the results of the correlation study, view the results here.

Semantic content optimization is about consumer intent and not keywords. Don’t optimize a site with “seattle attractions” but rather “pikes place market” and “space needle”.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1GhsLLr via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JEWDl8

Google Keynote Announces AdWords Changes & New Way to Think about Ads at #SMX East

Google Keynote Announces AdWords Changes & New Way to Think about Ads at #SMX East was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Brad Bender, vice president of product management at Google Display Network, delivered a keynote at SMX East 2015. Google VIPs often use the SMX stage to share big announcements, and today was no exception! Here are Google Display Network’s announcements, right off the bat:

1. Google Display Network is rolling out enhanced Dynamic Remarketing. Ads will now automatically reshape and resize to fit all devices.
2. The Global Display Network is moving to 100% viewable — We’re migrating all the CPMs to viewable CPMs. Reporting will be rolled out to all advertisers.
3. Adwords Audience Insights launched today. This will enable marketers to take a look at their remarketing lists and really understand their composition: demographics, location, interests, type of device — all this will empower them to make different choices about who to target and what to do creatively.

(You can read more about these rollouts on the AdWords blog.) Now, on to the full story on everything Bender had to say re: the Google Display Network, live from New York.

Using Programmatic Advertising Effectively

Bender shares that GDN is interested in accomplishing three things:

1. Reaching the perfect audience
2. Delivering relevancy at the moments that matter
3. Optimizing with full transparency

We used to go online — now we live online. The average U.S. family has four smartphones and consumes 60 hours of digital content a week. That’s really exciting for marketers because you have so many more moments to reach users that might care about your brand.

People used to have an attention span of 12 seconds and now it’s less than eight seconds. That’s a shorter attention span than a goldfish, and just a moment to grab your user’s attention.

This is where programmatic ads come in, and it’s what I’m very excited about as far as opportunities go. With the Google Display Network, what we’re looking to do is make all this programmatic capability available to all of you.

Reach Your Perfect Audience

The data you can bring to bear comes in advertising proprietary data, as well as AdWords intent rich data. Programmatic advertising, to start with, provides an incredibly valuable set of data. These are the relationships you have with your customers. Remarketing is a great example of this. Consumers go to websites up to six times before deciding to buy.

Customer Match, announced early this week, lets you upload an email address to Google, and we enable you to reach those users in a privacy-safe way in really relevant moments. Let’s say you’re a travel retailer with a frequent flyer program — when a user types “flight” into their mobile device, this can allow you to show them a coupon. You can also do this on YouTube and Gmail — provide a campaign that inspires them to think about their next trip, for example, when they’re searching for things like flights.

Audience Suite

How do you make choices about when and where to advertise? That’s why we created the Audience Suite to help marketers make smart choices about when and where to advertise.

Let’s say a user is surfing Formula One racing. They’re probably not looking to buy a race car, which makes them an Affinity Audience, rather than an In-Market Audience (who’s looking at fuel economy, makes and models). We want to make sure messages are incredibly relevant to each type of audience.

Gmail Ads

There are more than 900 million active Gmail users. Native ads in Gmail just rolled out globally — the ads that look like an email at the top of your inbox. Gmail ads are another great example of power programmatic — it’s about reaching users wherever and whenever they are in this always online world.

People spend time in Gmail. Gmail passes Larry Page’s toothbrush test — it’s used at least twice a day. We used to have text ads that ran in Gmail on the right-hand side and we’ve removed them. The only ad now is a native ad experience, after determining that this would be the most engaging for users. It’s a teaser ad that behaves like an email. Click it and it expands to a full screen immersive experience. You can include videos, rich media, etc. Recently we made it so that you can run these ads within AdWords.

Marriot International wanted to give users a real sense of what it would be like to stay at their international hotels. They made a full screen creative canvas to drive awareness using videos and imagery via Gmail ads. Marriot saw a 25% increase in visits to the site and an 18% increase in page visits per user.

Ad Resizing

Ad resizing is a huge area of complexity. Think about Android alone – there are more than 18,000 Android devices out there. If you had to think about manually creating a creative for each one of these, it would be nearly impossible. This is a great example of where programmatic can help. It automatically changes the size of the creative so it works in all these different environments. We’ve made it so you only have to upload three creative sizes to reach 95% of our inventory, up from 55%.

Conversion Trends for Ads

What are you seeing holistically in terms of conversion trends?

90% of users use multiple devices throughout a day. The customer journey is no longer linear and that’s the fundamental thing. Our goal is to stitch all that together to give you a full picture. You can still do last click attribution and look at single devices, but I think it gives you an incomplete view and will lead you to make incorrect decisions.

Web to app and app to web: Clicks and conversions are happening across devices, to a site to an app and vice versa. Now, you can do remarketing across web and app — a user can go to your mobile site, and later you can remarket to them on your app.

Think about Ads Differently: They Fund the Free Content We Take for Granted

Taking a step back, ads are really important for today’s ecosystem. They fund most of the free content we take for granted — videos, blogs, etc. It’s all funded by ads. I think the phenomenon of ad blocking is driven by people having bad experiences with ads. A number of years ago, we had popups (a bad experience). There are still bad experiences now — but ad blockers block bad ads and good as. We’re focused on making the ads as useful and relevant as possible and giving the user more power over how those ads behave.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1M23bMD via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JEWGgS

Direct Answers: How Should SEOs React? SMX Speakers Weigh In

Direct Answers: How Should SEOs React? SMX Speakers Weigh In was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

If your site gets featured in Direct Answers in search results, it can really boost traffic to your site. Don’t think of them as the enemy, but as a friend! Eric Enge, Amber Fehrenbach and Ehren Reilly are going to share their key insights into how to make Direct Answers populate, with data and examples straight from their agencies/brands at this don’t-miss SMX East session!

Ehren Reilly, Amber Fehrenbacher and Eric Enge

Latest Stone Temple Consulting Direct Answers Research – Eric Enge

Stone Temple Consulting’s Eric Enge (@stonetemple) shares an important quote from Google’s Amit Singhal: “The destiny of Google’s search engine is to become that Star Trek computer, and that’s what we are building.” Direct Answers are another step toward being the Star Trek computer.

Stone Temple Consulting ran 1.4 million queries through Google to see which would have rich answers including sidebars and which would have rich answer not including sidebars. The results? 35 percent rendered rich answers including sidebars and 29.4 percent rendered rich answers without sidebars.

How has this grown over time?

That’s 38 percent growth in seven months. Enge fully expects this trend to continue. Rich Answers are growing.

Two thirds of the time, Google includes a link to the source of the information. The cases where they don’t supply the link, the information is either public domain (capital of Washington state, for example). In other cases, Google has licensed the data (for song lyrics, as an example).

So, if your SEO strategy has had a heavy dependency on public domain information, know that this is going to get taken away from you. Google has a right to publish it, and they have a mission to be that Star Trek computer, so they’re going to do so.

Also, 54 percent of the domains used by Google for Rich Answers have a Moz domain authority of 60 or less. Lesson? Authority doesn’t trigger the answer.

These examples of Rich Answers show many cases of sites getting more traffic, thanks to their sites. What wins when it comes to Rich Answers? Simple, direct answers.

Stone Temple Consulting’s Testing

Enge published five videos answering various search questions in May, complete with transcripts. Each of them gave more information than just an answer to the question. In addition to the direct, simple answer, there’s more valuable content to go along with it.

Enge shared one of the videos on Google+ and submitted the URL to Google Search Console. In three days, they had a Rich Answer result for “How do you implement a NoFollow attribute on a link?”

Out of the other four videos, he was also able to get one more Direct Answer via a video: a 40 percent success rate!

Enge’s Advice for Getting a Direct Answer to Populate

1. Identify a simple question.
2. Provide a clear direct answer.
3. Offer value added info.
4. Make it easy for users and Google to find.

Turning Direct Answer Lemons into Lemonade – Amber Fehrenbacher

Amber Fehrenbacher (@afehrenbacher) is the CMO from Surety Bonds (specialty insurance company for bonds). After being hit hard by Penguin and Panda, Surety completely overhauled their marketing strategy and boosted their conversion rate and organic sessions, and decreased their bounce rate. Furthermore, within 30 days of the site redesign, Direct Answers started showing up for their content (even though the content itself didn’t change that much). Here’s what did change:

• Responsive site redesign
• Data-driven decision making
• Developed in-house content team
• Re-engineered user funnel
• Aligned social strategy with content
• Guest post

Surety’s Preferred Tools

• Google Analytics
• Search Console
• MailChimp
• Keyword Planner
• Google Forms
• PageAnalytics
• Moz
• Piwik

Optimizing for Direct Answers, According to Surety

• Follow Google best practices on structured data.
• Analyze user behavior in segments.
• Derive content from keyword research.
• Conduct qualitative research and pair with quantitative data to develop strategy.

Winning at Direct Answers – Ehren Reilly

Ehren Reilly (@ehrenreilly), the director of growth at Glassdoor, is next up to share his latest insights on Direct Answers.

Types of Businesses Struggling Since the Advent of Direct Answers

• TimeAndDate.com
• DollarstoRupees.com
• WhatIsMyIPAddress.com

These services were useful, but not unique. This is no longer a viable business model. Nor, as Enge mentioned earlier, are lyrics sites.

Spoiler Answers: This is Reilly’s term for Direct Answers that share everything you need right on the SERP, such as an entire recipe. Publishers get upset over these situations as they lose traffic and ad revenue. But this is the reality. So how do publishers deal with it? Face reality and focus on the positive. You can show up above the No. 1 position if you can answer the question more directly than the No. 1 result.

Think Inside the Box:

• Clickable Direct Answers are click magnets.
• CTR on clickable Direct Answers derive twice as much traffic as a No. 1 SERP result with no Direct Answer.
• If you’re No. 2 and not in a Direct Answer, you stand to lose half your traffic.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1PO0stB via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JEWGgK

Proceed Innovative Launches Newly Redesigned Client Websites to Improve their Online ...

Proceed Innovative, LLC, a provider of internet marketing and web design services, has recently redesigned two client websites to improve their SEO …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1JC0gZ3 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSKp4

An Indian poker website is betting on offline marketing to gain acceptance

“Since the industry is in a nascent stage, we are focusing on online marketing, but may decide to advertise in print and electronic media soon.”.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1YOcwkH via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSJBr

Blueberry Labs Private Limited SEO/ Online Marketing Analyst

Blueberry Labs is an Integrated Digital Content & Technology Company.We build Web properties to Scale with constantly evolving Designs, Content, …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1OFRAbP via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FDD6qo

Online 'advertorials': New IAB guidelines provide more transparency

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK) has released a set of guidelines to help the marketing industry provide more transparency to consumers …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1YOcwkC via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSK8I

topseos.com Announces ThinkBIGsites.com as the Third Top Search Engine Optimization Service ...

topseos.com is an online provider of independent reviews and ratings. The ratings of the top online marketing firms are released monthly to assist …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O7eo4r via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FDD3uT

Digital marketing agency PurpleClick Philippines launches

PurpleClick develops online marketing campaigns that scale with the kind of companies asking for their services, whether they be multinational …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1RfcBJ7 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSJl9

Singapore under 'attack': Imaginary war a 'Call of Duty' marketing ploy

Popular video game “Call of Duty” posted a series of tweets about a fictional attack on Singapore as part of their online campaign to promote its new …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1KQTkZ7 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FDD3uO

Content Marketing: Staying Relevant

Watch this course to learn how to keep your content marketing efforts current. Find out how to stay on top of trends, craft personalized content, and …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1M19VtW via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSK8D

Belize Internet Marketing & Website Design Launches New Placencia Real Estate Website for ...

Belmopan City, Belize, September 29, 2015 –(PR.com)– Today, Belize Internet Marketing & Website Design is excited to unveil the new Vision …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1Rf0LyC via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FDD5CM

Three Ways to Prepare Your Email Marketing for the Holidays

Email marketing drove 17.7% of online orders in 2014 (behind only organic and paid search) and is poised to be a major player in the 2015 holiday …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1KQTkZ5 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSJl5

Powerful Photos of World Patent Marketing's Lullaby Pacifier Convince Baby Boomers To Think ...

29, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – via PRWEB - World Patent Marketing, … “The Online Baby Product Sales industry is worth $5 billion and shows no …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O78JLC via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FDD5mu

Series of business programs offered at Westport Library

Oct. 27, 6 p.m.: “Starting A Busines — Online Marketing.” Bonnie Tyler and Sheila Torgan, founders of CyberSidewalks, LLC, and LinkedIn expert …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1YNBXCN via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSK8x

How to overcome the difficulties of copywriting for the Chinese market

This is further complicated in online marketing, where search engines and social media platforms impose distinct rules on the length of copy, the use …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1YNBXCS via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FDD3uE

Calculate Your Holiday Revenue With This Handy Calculator From Wpromote

Online marketing agency Wpromote is out with its 2015 Holiday Revenue Calculator. It’s designed to give you a peek at what you can expect for …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1OFu5zH via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSJkW

How Long Before Your Market Cuts The Cord?

Without suitable experience, you’ll find yourself and your brand behind your competition when it comes to optimizing your online marketing efforts.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1YNBXmq via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSJkU

TV ads are about to get personal with new targeting tools

Such surgical marketing messages are taken for granted on the Internet. … As brands shift more of their spending to the Web, where ads are more …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1VqvMjt via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1iKSJ4G

Marketing: The Price of a Free Internet?

So, is the issue that people just need to accept advertising and (dare I say) be grateful that the marketing community is keeping the internet (relatively) …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1VqvJV1 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1MFIjxk

6 Marketing Activities For Small Business And Mid-Market Companies

Whether you’re doing it in-house or outsourcing your digital marketing, developing an online marketing strategy is only the first step toward achieving …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1VqvMjr via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1MFIhpg

UangBola.com Shares the Latest Global Marketing Reports about Online Gambling for 2015 ...

The online gambling industry is a serious business that makes the government become a concern on the growing market of online gambling. Because …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1O78JLy via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1P5jMV4

Enterprise Local Marketing Automation Tools -- New Marketing Intelligence Report

Marketing Land’s latest edition of the “Enterprise Local Marketing … consumers’ increasing preference for online local information — particularly …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1YNBVuI via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1MFIjh1

SMX Liveblog: Evening Forum With Danny Sullivan

SMX Liveblog: Evening Forum With Danny Sullivan was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

No format, no PowerPoint, just questions from the SMX East audience to Search Engine Land editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan).

Google announced universal app campaigns and customer maps?

http://ift.tt/1FClN8J

http://ift.tt/1FvXU3c

Google could have done this sort of thing ages ago and they  haven’t. So, now that everyone else is doing it, no one’s going to point to Google and say you shouldn’t be taking first party data. The real question after this is when will you allow the targeting of people on their search histories for ads across the web.

You can create similar audiences based on an email list and based on visitors to your site (logged in or cookied).

Internet addresses running out of IP 4 addresses.

We’re moving to IP 6 and had enough warning to get ready for it.

Should SEOs transition to being a digital marketer?

Are you struggling with being a search marketer when “SEO is dead”? As long as there’s someone to own social and paid, then be the SEO! Someone needs to own the expertise.

Should we optimize for Bing? Yandex? Baidu?

For Baidu, they’re targeting marketers who can sell products.

A year ago you said Google+ was important for SEO. How do you feel about that now?

I would still say you should have a valid Google+ account for SEO. You still see content on Google+ posts outranking original content on a website. I’m looking forward to the day when I can say no. There’s no doubt the advantages have become less. Now all I can tell you is that you can get a ranking boost, of course, that’s the core of SEO. But, I wouldn’t invest a huge amount of time being social on Google+. I wouldn’t do a Hangout there. (!)

Does it change at all for Google My Business and Google+? In the case of local businesses, is google+ not dead?

Let’s call it Google Maps. I told Google when are you going to tell Google+ Local back into Google Local. Their answer was aren’t we doing that already? They didn’t internally understand the connection between Google Maps, local and Google+.

How should people address Twitter marketing?

Twitter stats are useful. You have to tweet a lot. I’ll tweet a story when it publishes and tweet again the next morning. I can tweet the same thing four times in the next day or two and people aren’t going to be seeing it multiple times, but rather maybe a chunk of people will see it one of those times.

It looks like a divorce between Bing and Yahoo. What’s really happening?

Ginny plugs a session called Ask the Search Engines: All Your Questions Answered. Bing and Yahoo are having a conscious uncoupling. Divorce is a harsh word – so 21^st century. Marissa Mayer came in and saw an opportunity in mobile. Under the new agreement, 49% of desktop Yahoo searches can be served by Gemini. What’s going on is Yahoo trying to get back to the ad revenue in search. I think it was a hard negotiated battle on both fronts there. I expect that at the end of five years we’ll see a full separation.

Danny: No one thought mobile was big when the deal was first signed and so that’s how Marissa saw the opportunity. What they’re saying by way of explanation is that there was so much potential and opportunity for Yahoo so they didn’t put it in the contract in order to let it see where it grew.

Will there be a rise of negative SEO and should there be more defensive SEO strategy?

The best defensive strategy is – get ready to groan – have great content. Two or three years ago there was a negative SEO freak out along with Penguin. The reality is that it’s not an issue for most people.

What’s the latest on dynamic search ads (DSA) and where are they going?

Ginny thinks they’re going to grow. There’s always a job in negative keywords. You still have to manage a campaign. You still have to know who you’re targeting, understand what your bid strategies are. Will marketers be drawn to the product as it improves? Absolutely. As targeting improves and performance improves as machine learning improves, it will become more intuitive for marketers to know how to implement it. It won’t be the end of keywords. In some way we may not buy keywords the same way but she doesn’t think keywords are going away. Ultimately Google’s goal is the advertiser gives them their KPI and they’ll make it work. That’s a few years away. Keywords aren’t going to be informing that automation.

With the internet of things (IOT) growing at a fast pace, how can we prepare?

Danny does a presentation of trends in search and he talks about how search is changing with wearables. If he goes to a new city, foursquare pops up and says I saw you’re in a new city. Try out this restaurant. He didn’t do a search on Google. You literally can’t type into so you’re telling it things. Years ago he said that a search marketer isn’t someone who gets you ranked in Google. A search marketer understands how someone finds your information and figures out how to get you displayed. Pay attention to the Apple Watch, Android Wear, don’t spend too much time worrying about the Pebble.

How can you promote SEO internally?

If you’re at a company who thinks you should do SEO first, then you’re lucky. Tomorrow is the Landy Awards and there’s a cross-channel category that highlights the value of SEO from the beginning. Look at the case studies you can present to people. Look at past mistakes that you can point to and say this would have been easier if SEO was involved in the beginning. After the Landy Awards we’re hoping to write up a lot of the winners. People are doing amazing things with fantastic returns.

As a hotel chain we’ve experienced a challenge with Google increasing CPCs with brand searches. Has anyone had a similar issue?

Tad Miller says check out RKGs report. We’re seeing 200 to 300% increases in brand keywords with 10/10 quality score. There’s a 50-60% incremental lift in traffic and conversions and a 25% increase in organic search click through. So you can’t just not do paid search for brand keywords.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1OF7Zxm via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1O1uTgK

Optimizing for Pinterest at @SMX East

Optimizing for Pinterest at @SMX East was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Intel’s Director of SEO Laura Mitchell and Community Manager Scott Jaworski (@scott_jaworski) dug deep into Pinterest to see what search best practices they could apply to Pinterest. After all, Pinterest considers itself a search engine rather than a social platform, so it made sense to think that what would work on Google might hold value on Pinterest. They’re sharing their findings in the SMX East session “Why Intel Investments in SEO Paid Dividends on Pinterest.”

Intel wanted to be on Pinterest for a simple but powerful reason: “Our users are on Pinterest, so we had to be there,” said Mitchell. 

Fast Facts About Pinterest

• Pinterest has 100 million active users, as of September 2015.
• 71% of users are women. However, 1/3 of signups are now male.
• 27% of users access Pinterest daily.
• 93% of pinners shopped online in the past 6 months, and are ten percent more likely to make purchases online (Nielsen)

What factors drive visibility on Pinterest?

• Pinners
• Pins
• Amount and Types of Boards
• Authority domains

Intel’s Pinterest Study

Intel looked at the top 25 pins per keyword for more than 45,000 keywords submitted to Pinterest. The study included:

• 110,000+ pins
• 19,000+ pinners
• 9,000+ domains
• 4 million+ repins
• 800,000 likes
• 15k+ comments

The Findings

Do pins from pinners with more pins or more followers perform better? YES. (Following back other pinners didn’t matter. Pinning content from many domains didn’t matter. Multiple boards didn’t matter.)

Intel found that 80% of pins ranking in the first row come from pinners with more than 1,400 total pins, and that pinners with first row ranking pins have an average of 229,000 followers (36% higher than pinners with pins in rows 2-4).

Pins in the first row, in fact, have “dramatically high repins, likes and comments than pins inn rows 2-4. They have 87% more repins, 93% more likes and 220% more comments. 50% of first row pins were rich pins.

Lastly, Intel found that the Pinterest algorithm appears to be heavily weighted for boards that include exact match keywords.

Recommendations for Pinterest Based on Intel Study

• Use rich pins.
• Optimize the source URL.
• Avoid pinning duplicate content.
• Align boards with Pinterest categories.
• Create boards that align with specific events and holidays.
• Create inspirational boards where that makes sense.

By taking their own advice, Intel has seen a 48% increase in average monthly engaged views and a 34% in average month views.

Intel’s Takeaways

1. Insights from search drive value well beyond the boundaries of the traditional SERP.
2. A market org structure that facilitates the sharing of insights across disciplines enables rapid innovation.
3. Focusing on the user reveals new ways to meet our audience where they are.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1ReGfy7 via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1WxplxC

No One Wants to Do Them, But Content Audits Are Worth It. Mike King Explains Why at #SMX

No One Wants to Do Them, But Content Audits Are Worth It. Mike King Explains Why at #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Content audits are worth it.

Or so says Mike King (@IPullRank). He’s diving into content audits in “Perfect Starts: How to Get More of the Right Traffic” at this SMX East 2015 session. Fair warning: he has a lot to say, and he talks fast — this liveblog captures the highlights. (Get his full 80+ slide deck here.)

No one became a marketer so they could do content audits. But, you have to create things that people actually want and will provide people value — and content audits help you do that. But we often put things on the Internet and are like, hmm, did that work? This is wrong. You should PLAN out a strategy.

A content audit, then, helps you identify holes in the customer journey and leaks in link equity needed to support organic search rankings. Audits also help you figure out where the money is — what has performed in the past? Which audiences has it resonated with?

Key Questions for Content:

• What is already performing?
• What can perform better?
• What are we missing?

Have a clear business objective. It’s not as important to get No. 1 for terms as it is to get No. 1 for the RIGHT terms.

Personas

King is a big proponent of personas. Understand who they are, as well as the stages they go through when looking for your product or service. Use a style guide, by the way. And if you don’t already have one, check out Voiceandtone.com from MailChimp.

Quickest Way to Build Personas: Data!!!

Put your mailing list through FullContact and get a lot of data – figure out more information on them. Then use DemographicsPro and upload their Twitter handles. Now you can get a 20+ page report with all kinds of data. Also, upload that your mailing list to Facebook’s audience insights.

Now you have user insights and can better build insights.

Build a Journey Map

Start with your business goals and put your keywords in social listening tools — what questions are people asking? How are they using the terms? What phase of their journey matches up with each phrase?

King’s Content Audit Preferred Tools

• Screaming Frog
• Social Crawlytics
• BuzzSumo
• DeepCrawl
• URL Profiler
• SEO Tools for Excel
• SEOGadget for Excel
• Content Audit for WordPress
• Kapost

Final Thoughts

Keep doing pivots until your data tells a compelling story.

Remember to isolate your competitors’ top-performing content pieces, and run some analysis on them. And use data on your existing content to help you make a case for new content.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1WwyczC via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1O1uTgI

The Top 7 Online Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2016

The online marketing industry is complex and volatile, but an exciting one for anybody who stays up on modern trends. Each year, new hardware, new …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1MYK5N4 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4yzQ

Retail Marketers Ill-Prepared For Holidays, Behind In Mobile Execution

According to a study released today by Campaigner, email marketing ranks as the top strategy for providing return of investment to online retailers this …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1MYK7of via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FC9gCH

8 Top Online Influencers in Digital Marketing

These top online influencers in the digital marketing world have managed to change the market for the better and usher in a new era of digital …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1VpFin5 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4xfp

Boohoo marketing spend brings sales boost

Online fashion retailer Boohoo has reported stronger than expected sales in the first half of the year despite increased competition — continuing its …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1VpFimU via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4yzM

Developing an Effective and Engaging Content Marketing Plan

Well, when you consider that the Internet currently has 4.8 billion web pages, and well over 900,000 websites actively pumping out content, then it's …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1VpFjY1 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FC9gCw

How to Launch a Career in Social Media Marketing

Excelling in online connecting is a bankable skill. … Effective marketing, be it social media or traditional, starts with determining a target audience and …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1Re0ETR via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4yjq

Column: Why SMS Marketing is crucial for your business

Column: Why SMS Marketing is crucial for your business … include e-commerce and online marketing, search engine optimization for bloggers and …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1MYlhon via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4yji

the world cup of marketing

That formula’s not enough when a large chunk of your audience is engaging with the event online, particularly through their social media accounts.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1MYK5N1 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4wYK

TV Ads Are About to Get Personal With New Targeting Tools

Such surgical marketing messages are taken for granted on the Internet. Yet, they are just now finding their way onto television, where the audience is …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1Re0Cvh via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4wYE

Top SEO company, SEOExplode.com Improves Formula & Expansion of SEO Services.

SEOExplode.com is proud to announce a new and improved SEO formula, and additional internet marketing & SEO services. Valley Stream, NY …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1MYK5MY via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FC9dH9

Kentico Preferred by Nearly 15% of Global Fortune 500

Since 2009, Kentico has seen Fortune 500 adoption of its all-in-one CMS, E-Commerce, and Online Marketing platform grow from 6% to 14.8% — a …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1NZqevU via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4y2R

Green online marketing company acquires North Canton IT business

The Karcher Group, a company in Green that offers online advertising, website development and other services, has acquired Ossa Technology …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1MYlesF via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FC9dH5

Rand Internet Marketing Announces Partnership With 3dcart

Rand Internet Marketing is known in the internet marketing industry for providing high quality services and solutions for their clients. Rand offers a wide …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1MDD2Gy via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4wIm

Innovative New Internet Marketing Directory Helps Marketers Discover Top Online Tools

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 28, 2015 /PRNewswire/ –IMSource.org, created by internet entrepreneur Greg Jeffries, is an internet marketing resource …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1Re0Cv8 via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FC9g5x

Football channel Copa90 hopes to score with YouTube marketing campaign

When media types talk about YouTube and football, there is often speculation that Google’s online video service will at some point throw its hat into the …

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1NZqevQ via Online Marketing

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1JB4v7j

Branding and Problem Solving: Thinking Bigger than Ranking with Wil Reynolds @SMX

Branding and Problem Solving: Thinking Bigger than Ranking with Wil Reynolds @SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

If someone took your content away from the web … would anybody miss it?

Wil Reynolds (@WilReynolds), founder of Seer Interactive, wants you to think about this.

Does your content solve a problem, or does it exist simply to exist? If you’re doing content for content’s sake, or focusing on ranking just for ranking’s sake, you’re playing the digital marketing game wrong. Because your chief concerns should be the user, their frustrations, and creating content they can trust.

Reynolds kicks off this SMX East 2015 session, entitled “Content, Your Brand and the Battle for Customers,” by stating: “All marketing boils down to this: understanding people’s frustrations, and creating content that addresses it.”

He uses Amazon’s buy-it-now dash buttons as an example. Have you seen them? They allow consumers to literally push a button and thereby order a new supply of … whatever. Those are a perfect example of something that has nothing to do with ranking, was inspired by frustration, and addresses a consumer’s needs.

Reynolds then throws out some statistics that underline Amazon’s power:

• Amazon Prime has a 74% conversion rate.
• Less than 1% of Prime members are likely to consider other mass-market retail sites (e.g., Walmart, Target) during the same online session. Amazon has trained users to buy from them.

Loyalty

Loyalty is mostly undisruptible. Loyalty isn’t about ranking, but about creating meaningful experiences and/or trust. There are certain brands who Reynolds will skip over higher results to get to. Reynolds gives the example of Moz. He’ll click on a result from the Moz blog even if it’s lower in the SERP because he trusts the content that he gets from Moz.

No amount of SEO solves an unmarketable products.

Think about the following as you move forward with your marketing:

Where are you putting the how before the who?

Where are you putting the algorithm before people?

Stay paranoid. Think about the kinds of things that Google doesn’t show answer boxes for that will be really helpful for users. Create content accordingly.

Branding vs. Ranking: AirBnB

Let’s say you’re a company focusing on vacation rentals. You focused on ranking, and you’ve achieved the No. 1 spot for the term.

Meanwhile, there was AirBnB. Instead of focusing on ranking, they focused on branding. They marketed the vacation experience: relaxation, adventure, etc. And their high quality content? When Airbnb produces content, people search for it.

AirBnB ranks No. 9 for vacation rentals … but they thought bigger than rankings. And now? Search for the term “Airbnb” dwarfs search for “vacation rentals.”

Brand matters.

AirBnb didn’t care about ranking for “vacation rentals.” AirBnB was busy building a brand.

Think Outside the Box

Think innovatively about content of all kinds. Reynolds talks about airplane safety videos and compares Virgin America’s dance/safety video to the average safety video. Virgin America actually considered what their fliers might want to see!

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/DtyfiPIHsIg” frameborder=”0″ class=”vidEmbed” allowfullscreen></iframe>

Search is critical – but the issue is really solving problems.

Trust is hard to disrupt. Is your content strategy building trust at every step?

And remember: if someone took your content away from the web … would anybody miss it?

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1QJZe2z via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1ReH3mv

SMX Liveblog: Local Search Q&A with Top Local Experts

SMX Liveblog: Local Search Q&A with Top Local Experts was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

All local SEO questions answered in this round table of top experts. The assembled experts will field these questions, submitted by the audience and also topics the panelists submitted to talk about.

• Why did Google switch to the 3 pack from the 7 pack?
• Are you guys also seeing a drop-off in clicks?
• What advice are you giving to businesses now? Especially for those who had visibility at spots 4 or 5 or 6?
• Are virtual offices allowed?
• Does anyone have statistics regarding how clicks are distributed between Google Maps and Google organic?
• Links vs. citations?
• What other things like scholarships and sponsorship of community organizations can businesses do?
• For multiple business locations, do you create separate directory listings?
• How do we avoid the difficulties of every time you make a change to a locksmith listing it gets marked as spam?
• How accurate is the data in the GMB dashboard?
• What’s the optimal time frame for posting new content to a GMB page?
• How are apps affecting local?
• How are you getting reviews?

Moderator: Matt McGee, Editor In Chief, Search Engine Land & Marketing Land (@mattmcgee)

Speakers:

• Mary Bowling, Local SEO and Search Engine News (@MaryBowling)
• Joy Hawkins, Product Consultant at Imprezzio Marketing (@joyannehawkins)
• Casey Meraz, Founder of Ethical SEO Consulting (@caseymeraz)
• Andrew Shotland, President of Local SEO Guide, Inc. (@localseoguide)

Why did Google switch to the 3 pack from the 7 pack?

Mary: Google has said for a long time that they want the same mobile and desktop experience.

Casey: To monetize – and he’s expecting more of that down the road. We’ve seen tests where they’re testing no organic or local results above the fold, especially on mobile. So, it’s feasible that they keep only ads above the fold.

Andrew: Likely 3 local results for mobile usability, and it’s gravy if you can switch them to paid.

Joy: Many of her clients saw no drops in clicks when the switch happened, so maybe no one was clicking beyond result 3.

Mary: Maybe Google doesn’t as strongly feel the need to show multiple results because they’ve gotten good at serving local results over big brands like Yelp.

Are you guys also seeing no drop-off in clicks?

Andrew: Across big brands with lots of locations, organic clicks have gone down and they freak out until they point out that the clicks have just moved over to GMB results, for example.

Casey: They made it harder in some cases for the user to get to the website. For instance, a click to the title brings you to the business listing.

Mary: Google has always said they want to give answers from SERPs and this is the opposite, because it requires clicks into the local finder to find the info you want.

What advice are you giving to businesses now? Especially for those who had visibility at spots 4 or 5 or 6?

Mary: Keep calm and carry on. It takes a while for these things to settle down once Google makes changes. This has been the most chaotic testing in the history of local search. Since then I haven’t heard them come back and complain that traffic and phone calls are down.

Andrew: The biggest drops right now are in mobile organic. There are more ads at the top, the 3 pack, then organic results. Anyone relying on local organic results on mobile are in a pickle. The only solution right now is to expand the net of keywords you’re targeting.

Casey: Reviews are still super important. If you’re the only one that has reviews or with a substantial amount of reviews, you can get more clicks if you have more and better reviews.

Joy: Some clients were mad that review stars were removed from branded searches. That makes it just come down to location and that’s tricky for brands with multiple locations.

Are virtual offices allowed?

Joy: It’s in the guidelines that virtual offices aren’t allowed. The MapMaker team is probably your real enemy because they consider virtual offices to be spam. For home-based businesses, you have to stick with your main office.

Mary asks what to do if competitors are obviously faking locations?

Joy: Report it in MapMaker, leave a comment and include proof. Street View is a great resource. Reporting competitors is a highly underutilized tactic. The MapMaker team is good at getting things reviewed within 1 or 2 weeks.

Does anyone have statistics regarding how clicks are distributed between Google Maps and Google organic?

Casey: Anecdotally, we think Google organic gets more.

Andrew: Google Maps traffic in aggregate is going down over the last couple years. The last data we have is 61% of US iPhone users use Apple Maps as their default map app and he expects it to go up to 80-90% with the new iPhone purchases at the holidays. There’s an applebot web crawler now. Apple is skimming off traffic from local in a variety of ways, including

http://ift.tt/U04Gn3

It’s the biggest local search system that most people ignore.

Mary: Optimize for traditional SEO signals first and get that in order. Local SEO factors, like NAP consistency, are more of a suppressing factor than one that boosts you up.

Andrew: When you get to #5, to get to #1 is fine tuning the small factors like adding a keyword to a title.

Links vs. citations?

Mary: In local SEO, nofollow links can have just as much of a signal as a follow link.

Joy: Links of citations. Links + citations are even better. Links are harder to get so that’s why they’re more valuable.

Casey: Citations can sometimes be link sources. He says to look at the hyperlocal directories and see what else you can add to there, maybe you can get a link there. Everyone may be able to be listed in a city directory but not everyone’s doing a scholarship or sponsoring a little league team.

What other things like scholarships and sponsorship of community organizations can businesses do?

Mary: A lot of people don’t think about local media attention. That has a huge effect on local rankings and Google is paying attention.

Andrew: A personal injury attorney said that he spends 6 figures on PR and media coverage and that gets him to #1 without any other local SEO. He believes that’s the case.

Casey: If you do a scholarship, make it go farther and pitch that story to local media. The links from media are more valuable than the .edu links for the scholarship.

Mary: Move your focus offline and ask what can I do to market my business if the Internet didn’t exist, Google has found a way to reward that.

Joy: If you own a coffee shop, most likely you had a real estate agent, insurance agent, lawyer, a list of common businesses that most people have a relationship with. Reach out to them and say that you’ll give them a testimonial that they can use in their website. The ask is a link to the site with the explanation that it’s for credibility. Some small portion does it. She sees it as natural and not a grey area.

Andrew: You’d start to get into trouble if the anchor text looks commercial or if the link is reciprocal.

With the recent 3-pack update, lots of other tests are going on (phone numbers on and off, 20 listings near the Knowledge Graph). What’s the latest?

Andrew: He suspects the click-through rate on mobile ads increase significantly.

Joy: Phone numbers are back as of right now.

For multiple business locations, do you create separate directory listings?

Andrew: Every location should have a unique page. Every time they post the GMB page and the location page, rankings go through the roof. The tension is a Panda problem.

Joy: The biggest problem she sees here is not unique enough title tags. It’s important for business pages to add unique content if they want to, so that’s a key reason to have separate listings and unique photos and titles, etc.

Mary: The more you can localize each location page, the more you’ll be rewarded for it.

Andrew: REI used to be the poster child for having the best local landing pages.

How do we avoid the difficulties of every time you make a change to a locksmith listing it gets marked as spam?

Joy: Make changes to locksmith listings as minimally as possible, Google moderates like crazy. If you want to make a change, you may want to try calling GMB.

How accurate is the data in the GMB dashboard? (Author’s note: I couldn’t really catch this but would love to get more info from Joy and Andrew to expand it.)

Joy: Pay attention to impressions and call data. Filter the data with big spikes.

Andrew: Don’t get thrown by Search Analytics.

What’s the optimal time frame for posting new content to a GMB page?

Mary: Unless you have a huge loyal following that you engage with on Google+, then you’re wasting your time there.

Joy: 99% of my clients’ customers aren’t on Google+ so that’s not worth it.

Matt: They’re dismantling Google+, right?

Joy: Yes, I think they’ll call it something different soon.

Andrew: I think it’s weird that normal people can’t find GMB pages.

Mary: It seems to be a container for holding your data.

How are apps affecting local?

Andrew: The concept of indexing app content is becoming more important.

Joy: The Yelp app is used a lot. It’s surprising how many businesses haven’t claimed their Yelp listing. Yelp gets a serious amount of traffic.

Casey: Every niche is different. See where your customers are hanging out and then be there.

Matt: The latest industry data is that the Google Search app is growing faster than the Facebook app. Google Search is not just in the browser.

Andrew: Google Search app is incredible. It has the OK Google voice query, and that and Siri are becoming more popular and they give contextual results based on your earlier query. You have to start thinking about the ways people are searching for the second or third clarifying/qualifying query.

Can home-based businesses list on Apple Maps?

Andrew: Technically no. If you look at your Apple Maps dashboard you may see that your listing is not approved, but it may show up in the map. Claim your business at MapsConnect.apple.com. Some industries require a TripAdvisor and Local.com listing.

How are you getting reviews?

Joy: Focus on Android users. They already have all the apps on their phone that they need. They can ask them while they’re there at the office. An allergist gives allergy test shots and patients have to sit for an hour. During that time he asks them to leave a review and he has tons of reviews.

Mary: Businesses can’t hide any more. It used to be that if you were in a high traffic area you could have enough foot traffic to keep your mediocre business going. The key is to commit to listening to what their customers are saying about them and making a huge commitment to continually improve their business based on that feedback.

Casey: If you have a great business, the reviews come in. Get 5 Stars is a tool you can look at using.

Andrew: They use reviews as a content generator for local landing page content. That has a dramatic impact on those pages’ ability to rank organically.

Mary: Mike Blumenthal asked why people leave reviews. Great job or lousy jobs get reviews. In the middle, or an expected experience, didn’t get reviews.

Joy: A tip shared in the latest Moz Local Search Ranking Factors report: If you go to the local finder and hover over your competitors, there will be links under each competitor and you may get an insight into what you might be missing.

Andrew: This same resource can help you find the out-of-place thing that may be bringing you down.

Mary: Look for places where they can authenticate the reviews. Trip Advisor and Hotels.com are two authentic review sources and more consumers are figuring these things out, places where you can get more authentic reviews. Yelp tells businesses not to solicit reviews on Yelp, but because they have the check-in feature, Yelp will ask users if they want to review the business.

What kind of audit do you do to ID issues from the Knowledge Graph?

Andrew: Have a good inventory of different KG result types. SERP by SERP. There are certain data sets that Google acknowledges power the KG.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1ME6ufw via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1FGHsN4

SEO for Ecommerce: What You Need to Know from #SMX East

SEO for Ecommerce: What You Need to Know from #SMX East was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

SEOs working on ecommerce sites face particular challenges and require specialized know-how. At SMX East, speaker Adam Audette (@audette), the SVP of organic search at Merkle, reached out to these SEO-savvy ecommerce-minded marketers in this short but fact-packed session on SEO for ecommerce sites.

SEO Touches Everything

As SEO marketers today, we need to be familiar with everything. However, there are two major pillars of SEO: the technical side and the audience side. Here are some of the main issues.

Technical Considerations

• Crawl space
• Duplication
• Dynamic content
• Site migrations
• Mobile serving
• International sites

Audience Considerations

• Search behavior
• Work flow
• Content topics
• Keyword research
• Engagement
• Conversion paths

Content Considerations

In ecommerce environments, “native” content is limited to category pages, product pages, buyers’ guides, reviews and blog content. At the end of the day, though, the inventory is the content. The more you leverage that, the better. Levi’s is a best-in-class ecommerce site. Consider their faceted navigation — it’s very useful, and allows you to immediately drill down and even conduct Boolean searches within the navigation.

Amazon is great when it comes to review data — it’s very valuable and they surface it in useful ways. There are callouts, aggregated reviews, star ratings. It’s easy and designed to provide information quickly.

Content strategy begins on the SERP — what comes up when people search? There’s a race toward structured data for a reason. What happens when video thumbnails appear for a product? The click-through rate (CTR) for results with a video thumbnail was 2%. CTR without a video thumbnail was 17%. When looking for a product, people didn’t want videos. Think about what the user wants.

Out of Stock Products
You have three options for handling product pages for items that are out of stock:

• 301
• 404
• Continue serving the page with messaging and good recommendations (winner!)

Technical SEO for Ecommerce Websites

“A technical SEO is the plumber of the internet.”

As unsexy as technical SEO may be, it’s very dependable. There’s often low-hanging fruit that is low-cost, as compared to a television commercial, for example. Technical SEO moves the needle on an e-commerce site and can be easily justified as an expense.

When you get all your signals lined up (navigational and internal links, external back links, canonical tags, XML files all pointing to the same definitive URLs), it’s incredibly powerful.

Duplication

Ecommerce sites commonly have duplicate content issues at the product level. Use forensics to delve into the issue (just a few tools, keep it simple). Normally, what’s indexed is what matters (if it’s a dupe but isn’t crawled, deprioritize). Always crawl the site yourself. Keep it actionable! Don’t get caught in a maze.

Audette’s favorite site searches to find dupe content:

• Site:mydomain.com and variations
  • Exclude subdomains with: -site:blog.mydomain.com
  • Find duplicate domains with –site:mydomain.com intitle:exact title tag
• Inurl:prodID=121212
  • Use with site:mydomain.com
  • Experiment with using categories or folders, too, like: site:mydomain.com inurl:/category/
  • Knock off successive folders
  • Use with intitle, such as: site:mydomaincom inurl:prodID=121212 title:”we’ve got all the stuff here : brand”

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/1M02BPi via Online Marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1ReH5e2